The Germans Are Coming. But Does The Watch Snob Even Care?

German Brand Junghans

Dear Snob,

Good day and as I come along with the German watch brand Junghans, the sales guy told me that they are the largest watch maker in Germany and this brand had been representing the German watch making, at the same time the higher range label as Erhard Junghans is using the same base caliber as Grand Seiko and Seiko Credor.

As far as i know Junghans is more known for the radio control watches back to the 90's. What is your thoughts on this German brand?

I am currently considering the Max Bill Chronoscope or the Meister Chronoscope where both of these are having really nice domed shape of crystal but in plexiglass.

Junghans is actually a fairly old company that, in addition to having once been one of the biggest makers of watches and clocks in the world, also pioneered radio-controlled watches, as well as being one of the first companies to sell a quartz watch. The mixture of such technologies with their production of mechanical watches seems to confuse some people; one struggles to formulate a clear notion of what the company is all about.

The Max Bill clocks and watches are utterly uninteresting horologically, but they have their place as charming design pieces, I suppose (as a matter of fact, I just remembered — I have a Max Bill clock in the pantry of my summer home, though of course mine’s a first-year model from 1957.)

The Hong Kong-based holding company that used to own them broke up in 2006 and now they’re being run from Germany once again, which is nice if you care about that sort of thing. Their relationship with Seiko is not a new one, and the Erhard Junghans watches do indeed use modified Seiko movements, including the column-wheel chronograph movement used in the Seiko Flightmaster chronographs, and a modified version of the movement used in Grand Seiko; I prefer my Seiko movements in Seiko watches. Junghans also seems to have been infected by Seiko’s occasional propensity for making odd design decisions, I might add. It’s a perfectly good company that makes perfectly nice watches — some better than others — but it seems to arouse no actual passion, which is perhaps the reason I can’t summon the energy to even properly make fun of them, or you.

What To Do About Roger Dubuis

Dear Watch Snob,

I have a question regarding Roger Dubuis. Their movements objectively are superb, as they are the only manufacturer to have all its models adhering to the Poincon de Geneve. What are your thoughts of the brand? I look forward to your answer.

Roger Dubuis may be the single most problematic watchmaker in existence; nobody at Richemont seems to know what to do with it. Carlos Diaz and Roger Dubuis were a rather bizarre partnership to begin with — I can never quite shake the conviction that the latter agreed to work with the former after having a Mickey Finn slipped into his drink — and the result was a firm with a very schizoid character that still troubles it today.

They make superb movements (now — they made horrendously unreliable stuff for a few perilous years, until Richemont bought them and read them the riot act on quality control) but their designs don’t seem to know whether to embrace the unashamed garish overstatement of previous years, or slip into something more sedate; as a result their watches often come across as indecisive, like a reformed rake trying to settle down to a quiet married life whose heart isn’t really in it.

And unfortunately for them, whilst the use of the poinçon de Genève really is an added value, and of some interest to the horologically serious, it remains something that the feeble wits of their usual audience (consisting of steroid-popping gigolos with spray-on tans, and fat-cat ex-Soviet state security flatheads, as far as I can tell) will never grasp.

Despite all this, Roger Dubuis watches are very well-made, but as a whole, the company still struggles to find an identity. What they ought to do is fire whomever is running their idiotic marketing campaign and have a go at actually letting their watches speak for themselves. You can’t succeed by appealing to people’s intelligence and insulting it at the same time. They might succeed, they might fail, but at least they would be doing so honestly.